National Security Watch: New math in domestic security
It's not often the Senate devolves into a shouting match that one senator, Republican Susan Collins of Maine, calls "a regrettable and corrosive argument that pits rural states against urban areas." But it's also not often that senators jigger with the controversial formulas used by the Department of Homeland Security to divvy up billions of dollars in grant money destined for state and local first responders.
But that issue was on the burner last week when senators voted to tack a change in the funding formula on to their mammoth funding bill for the entire Department of Homeland Security. It certainly wasn't pretty, and for large, metropolitan areas, the result was considered a loss.
Since September 11, the department has handed out first-responder grant moneys based on a simple recipe: Guarantee each state 0.75 percent of the total pot of money and each territory 0.25 percent. This swallows up 40 percent of all the funds; the rest is split up according to population formulas. This produces an oft-reported, oft-scoffed-at, all-too-familiar situation: Rural states like Wyoming take home more bucks per capita than target-rich states like New York and California [Security at any price? (5/30/05)]. Earlier this year, the president tried to inspire change on this account with his annual budget request. In it, he asked Congress to reduce the minimum amount allotted to each state to 0.25 percent. The House has twice passed a bill that would implement the 0.25 percent minimum for the largest grant programs, leaving 90 percent of the funds available for DHS to divvy up according to risk-based calculations.
But enter the Senate, where it's a whole different ballgame. According to a report compiled by the Congressional Research Service, because of the addition of grant programs that escape the demands of the first-responder formula, DHS was slated to hand out 70 percent of the grant money this year according to risk-based considerations. (That is, if the current formula remained unchanged.) A bill proposed by Collins (of sparsely populated Maine, of course) and Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman (Connecticut) would have lowered the mandatory amount given to each state to 0.55 percent. But it put more grant programs under the umbrella of the formula, resulting in only 60 percent of the funds being handed out with risk in mind. Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein (California) and Republican Sen. John Cornyn (Texas) introduced legislation essentially mimicking the bill that passed in the House.
The debate was slashing. "Terrorists can attack anywhere at any time," Lieberman advised his colleagues. He added that risk-based formulas aren't a "hard science" and reminded senators of small towns associated with macabre terrorist events, including Beslan, Russia, and a beachside property on the island of Bali in Indonesia. To some of his colleagues, this notion was ridiculous.
"Members of this body should not be the ones to decide where the money should go," Senator Feinstein bellowed, just minutes before her legislation went down in flames. Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey took the argument to Collins's doorstep: The target of last week's subway attacks wasn't Portsmouth, England, he said, and in the future, "the odds are it won't be Portsmouth, Maine." (Portsmouth is actually in New Hampshire but borders southern Maine.)
Collins's legislation took home the prize, and surprisingly, the mood in the House was one of a Pyrrhic victory. Weeks ago, it looked like the Senate wouldn't vote on changing the formula at all, meaning the old formula would remain in place and the issue would never be debated at all.
"We're going to get funding formula reform in this Congress," one House aide said. "That much is clear."
Look for further screaming and chest pounding when the House and Senate leaders meet in a conference committee to try to hammer out the differences between their respective bills—a showdown that will likely occur this fall.
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